Gamer Buys Virtual Space Station

"A virtual space resort being built in the online role-playing game, Project Entropia, has been snapped up for $100,000 (£56,200). Jon Jacobs, aka Neverdie, won the auction for the as yet unnamed resort in the game, which lets thousands of players interact with each other. Entropia also allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash.

The space station is billed as a "pleasure paradise". Last year, a gamer bought an island for $26,500 (£13,700). The space station is described as a "monumental project" in the "treacherous, but mineral rich" Paradise V Asteroid Belt and comes with mining and hunting taxation rights. With the price tag also comes mall shopping booth and market stall owner deeds, a land management system, a billboard marketing system, and space station naming rights. Neverdie is a popular and well-known in-game character. He and another character, Island Girl, appeared in a 2003 dance music movie Hey DJ!, which starred Jon Jacobs, Charlotte Lewis, and Tina Leiu..." From Gamer buys virtual space station, BBC News.

A Self-Regulating Virtual Radio Station

PDradio, transmitting computed sounds in Pure Data format. The definition of streaming 'radio' involves a fundamental difference with respect to traditional radio, that is, the possibility to organize a deterritorialized and computable flow of sound data. The PDradio project, by Winfried Ritsch and Georg Holzmann, makes this possibility concrete. This radio station transmits Pure Data files uploaded by the audience and selected by a software-dj compiled in the code. This artificial entity also announces the pieces using voice synthesizing functionalities, telling the file name and the associated metadata, sprinkled with impromptu communications. If a user shows his appreciation for a piece, the dj will generate a personalized playlist. PDradio runs on a Linux server with the programs Zope and Plone and the calculated music follows the composition scheme, that is, the rules of this ductile tool, aesthetically reflecting them in the loops used in its compositions. It's pure electronic music with a wide range of styles, but which can't detach itself from machinic frequencies. If we may talk of 'genre', it abstracts the usual musical style categories to trascend into a style of composition, recursively widening its concept. [via neural.it]

José Luis Barrios and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

* This is the edited transcription of a teleconference which took place in the Sala de Arte Público Siquieros (SAPS), Mexico City, on the 20th of April 2005, and which was moderated by the director of SAPS, Itala Schmelz. Translation from the Spanish original by Rebecca MacSween. [More....]

Sfeer is a series of interactive photo animations that resemble computer games, but the players are real figures. The animations, put on the surface of a sphere, were transformed into explorable panoramic pictures. Using a touchscreen visitors can navigate among the pictures like they would navigate a city (here, it's Amsterdam), stop the stories wherever they like and go on with another place or character. Users can also choose whether they prefer the images to be accompanied by recorded sounds of the streets or by the personal music of the avatar.

The environment resembles an adventure game full of choices, where each decision may bring unforeseen consequences just like in everyday life. Changing the characters or hopping from link to link enable to see different lives running parallel in the same city. The aim of the project was to reveal the city from this human perspective, where the background of the scenario is Amsterdam (a similar visit of Budapest is in preparation).